Nichole Sobecki / Nairobi, Kenya

Nichole Sobecki isan American photographer and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya, and a member of VII Photo Agency. After graduating from Tufts University, Nichole spent the early years ofher career in Turkey, Lebanon and Syria, focusing on regional issues related to identity, conflict, and human rights. From 2012-2015 she led Agence France-Presse’s East Africa video bureau, and was a 2014 Rory Peck Awards News Finalist for her coverage of the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya. Nichole’s work has been recognized by Pictures of the Year, the One World Media Awards, the Alexandra Boulat Award for Photojournalism, The Magenta Foundation, and The Jacob Burns Film Center, among others, and her work has been exhibited internationally. She is a contributor to Everyday Africa, a collection of images shot on mobile phones across the continent, and an attempt to showcase the moments missing from dramatic news images —everyday life that is neither idealized nor debased.

Nichole aims to create photographs and films that demand consideration for the lives of those represented – their joys, challenges, and ultimately their humanity.

Afghan youth on the diving platforms of a war-damaged Soviet occupation-era swimming pool in Kabul. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A woman walks through a cactus field in a drought-stricken area of western Somaliland, a semi-autonomous region in the north of Somalia. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Boats gather at dawn in the old port in Mogadishu, the Somali capital, as fishermen land their catch and ready it for transport to the city’s fish market. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Portrait of Ayaan Ali, 16, in her family’s kitchen in Aynabo, Somaliland. Two weeks before a family member, Mohamed Gaagaale, was shot dead by a neighbor after a dispute over access to land to graze his animals. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A poor neighborhood overlooking Cabinda, Angola, a heavily guarded territory that accounts for half the oil output from Africa's top petroleum producer. A sharp decline in international oil prices hit the economy hard in Angola, one of the world's most unequal countries. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Dheg Mohamed takes apart her home before loading the materials onto a cart to be moved. Several successive seasons of low rainfall left the well in her family’s hometown of Aynabo, Somaliland, dry, forcing them to relocate elsewhere. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A man in a government building on the outskirts of Benghazi, Libya, that had been burned by the opposition. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Libyans demonstrate against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in front of Benghazi’s courthouse, the center of protests within the city. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A Marine wounded by an improvised explosive device is cared for in a medevac helicopter in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Marines and an Afghan National Army soldier carry an Afghan civilian wounded by insurgent gunfire on a stretcher to a waiting medevac helicopter in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Hundreds gather for an Easter service at All Saints' Cathedral church in Nairobi, Kenya, to mourn the country's worst ever massacre, the killing of almost 150 people in an attack on Garissa University College by Somalia's Shebab Islamists. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Fishermen untangle their nets in the port of Bosaso, the largest city in Puntland. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A bird takes flight in the ancient port city of Maydh, which lays quiet and nearly abandoned. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

A family carries their belongings through Adi-Harush Camp at dusk. Ethiopia hosts more than a quarter of a million Eritrean refugees, many of whom spend only a few months at camps like Adi-Harush before pursuing the long and perilous route to Europe via Sudan and Libya. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)

Portrait of Adji in Agadez, Niger. Adji used to make his living driving migrants across the Sahara to Libya before an EU-funded crackdown on human smuggling made it too risky. (Photo by Nichole Sobecki)